No Health Care for Wanted Pregnancies, No Abortions for Unwanted Ones

In Nebraska, if you don't want to be pregnant, anti-choice lawmakers will do their best to force you to act as an incubator. But if you do want to give birth, then they couldn't care less if your newborn baby dies due to their laws.

As I wrote on Immigrant Rights earlier this month, a proposed bill would have continued the state's long-standing practice of providing prenatal care for low-income women. But Gov. Dave Heineman's threatened veto killed the pro-life legislation because he was bothered by the fact that poor undocumented immigrant women would also receive health care under this bill -- even though it's the U.S. citizen baby who will eventually be born that is most harmed by the denial of prenatal care. A shocking 4% of newborns whose mothers did not receive prenatal care will die before their first birthday.

Meanwhile, another recently proposed bill would require proof that women seeking an abortion are physically and mentally sound enough to received an abortion. Really? We don't go around requiring women to prove they're physically and mentally stable enough to bring a new life into this world, but we're going to impose unconstitutionally vague, impossible to comply with extra restrictions if they don't want that responsibility? As a hint, not only do doctors generally try to do what's healthy for their patients, but being pregnant and giving birth is a way bigger physical strain and health risk than an abortion procedure, and in many cases probably a bigger mental health issue as well.

Guess it just goes to show again that, for the anti-choice camp, they only "babies" that matter are the unborn. Seems a lot more like controlling a woman's body than being "pro-life."

Photo credit: molly_darling